Shooting Hollywood

by Melodie Johnson Howe

  “It was just a joke. I realized I could imitate her voice. So I called up and tried it out on him.” Another giggle. “Oh God, did he fall for it. It was the only time I could ever make him squirm.”

  “Did you call me last night and pretend to be Vivian?”

  She licked her lips. “I need more gloss. Why would I pretend to be Vivian with you?”

  “Maybe you wanted to make me squirm, too.”

  “I already did that, didn’t I?”

  “When?”

  “In wardrobe yesterday. Gordon told me to strut around in front of you. He wanted you to see what he was getting now.”

  “And you didn’t mind doing that?”

  “I’ve done worse.”

  “Like what?”

  “Other women, other guys. Whatever Gordon wanted.” She kept watching herself in the mirror as she talked.

  I stood behind her. Now we were both reflected in the mirror. There was an eerie resemblance. But her eyes and her mouth had a hardness that mine would never have.

  “What does your boyfriend think of you doing things like that?”

  “I never told him.”

  “Gordon wanted you to stop seeing your friend?”

  “Yes. If I didn’t stop he said he wouldn’t help me.”

  “When you found Gordon and me in the car you said, ‘Oh, my God, oh, my God’ and then screamed.”

  “So?”

  “That’s my exact line in the script down to the scream.”

  “Those writers must know what they’re doing because it’s what people really say. Look, I’m the only one who had everything to lose by Gordon’s death. Just remember that.”

  “Maybe you got tired of doing whatever Gordon wanted.”

  “Miss Poole, we’re ready for you on the set. Is Wynn in there?” the third assistant director asked through the closed door.

  “Yes, she is.”

  “We’re ready for her, too.”

  “You’re Miss Poole and I’m just Wynn. One day they’ll call me by my last name.”

  “I think it has to do more with my age than being treated like a star. Do you really think Gordon killed himself?”

  “I think I’m not a dirty blonde anymore. Like my new color? Golden blonde. And I’m going to see to it I stay golden.”

  I stood in the shower and watched the pinky-beige makeup run off my face and body and swirl down the drain. It was like washing away a second skin. I got out and wrapped myself in a white terry-cloth robe.

  The doorbell rang. It was only 7:30. Wynn didn’t strike me as a young woman who was ever early. As I made my way to the foyer the Mexican pavers in the living room and hall felt cold and smooth under my bare feet. I opened the door.

  Detective Lang was wearing another cheap suit.

  “Have you come to arrest me?”

  He grinned. It was a nice grin. “No arrest. I wanted to give you this.” He handed me a new package of pantyhose. My size. My color. “The others got a run in them.”

  I laughed. “Thanks. You sure you’re not keeping them? I may be famous for fifteen minutes again.”

  “Let’s hope it’s longer this time.”

  “Has justice been served?” I asked.

  “There were only Gordon Keith’s fingerprints on the gun.” He shrugged. “Let’s say the powers that be have been served.”

  “Vivian lied to me. Said she wasn’t in the bathroom.”

  “She said the same thing to me.”

  “Why lie about something so simple? If she had used his bathroom it wouldn’t have proved anything.”

  “People get nervous and they lie.”

  “What about my car?”

  He handed me a card. “Call this number. The only problem is you’ll have to pay to have it cleaned and detailed. Well, it was nice to see you in person after all these years.”

  “Sorry you didn’t score in the drive-in.”

  “I’ve gotten a little better at it since then. I just don’t take my dates to see any of your old movies.” I watched him he retreat down the stone path.

  I changed into jeans and a white cotton shirt. I had thought of putting on my warm-ups, but my ego was such that I couldn’t sit around in baggy sweats while Wynn vamped in her mini.

  At eight thirty she came in wearing a black short skirt and tight black sweater. “God, I’m sorry I’m late,” she blurted.

  “I didn’t expect you to be on time.”

  She followed me into the living room. Her heels clicked on the pavers creating that same sharp staccato sound that only women in high heels make. Only women. I stopped. I had never heard the sound of Wynn’s heels echoing on the concrete. She had just appeared by my car.

  “Where’s your script, Wynn?”

  “Script?” She nervously clutched her purse to her flat belly.

  “We were going to go over our lines together.”

  “I left it at home.”

  I felt uneasy. Even afraid. I moved toward the sliding glass doors that overlooked the patio and the ocean. I could see the shadowy figure on the beach walking the poodle again. If I screamed he might be able to hear me. That is, if he wasn’t too close to the water. I started to open the doors.

  “What are you doing?” she asked sharply.

  “Letting in some air,” I said, unlocking them.

  “Don’t.”

  “You were already in the garage, weren’t you, Wynn?”

  “Yes.”

  “What were you doing?” My heart was beginning to pound.

  “I called Gordon and told him you were going to take me home. He went with me down to your Jag. He wanted you to see us together in your car.” She giggled, then turned somber. “I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to be used anymore.”

  “Detective Lang was just here and told me the investigation is closed. Why don’t we leave it at that?”

  “You think we should leave it?” she asked.

  “Yes, Wynn. Why don’t you go home now?”

  “No! I can’t.”

  The doorbell rang. I started toward the foyer.

  “Don’t answer it,” she yelled, fumbling in her purse. “Don’t! I have a gun.”

  I lunged for the door and wrenched it open. Vivian Keith stood there.

  “Hello, Diana. May I come in?”

  She pushed past me into the living room. Wynn stood in the middle of the floor waving her gun looking like a child who had just been awakened from her sleep.

  “I told you not to answer it,” she said, the gun shaking in her hand. “I knew she was following me.”

  “Put it down, Wynn,” I coaxed.

  “That’s right, Wynn, put it down.” Vivian reached in her jacket pocket and came out with her own gun.

  I stepped back. Too many women. Too many guns.

  “It’s not real,” Wynn shouted. “It’s not real.”

  Vivian fired. Wynn’s knees buckled. She crumpled to the floor, rolled on her back, drawing up her knees. Moaning, her long legs slid straight out and she never moved again.

  “She was trying to blackmail me,” Vivian explained. “Comes to my home tonight and wants money. Starts waving that stupid fake gun around like she was Joan Crawford.”

  “You killed Gordon.”

  “She saw me do it. She was hiding behind some damn car.”

  “How did you know Gordon was going to be in the garage?” I asked, moving slowly backward toward the patio doors.

  “I was in his office. As you said, I had gone into the bathroom.” She moved with me. “I heard him on the phone. I thought he was talking to you. Going to meet you in your car. I knew he kept a gun in his desk. It was easy. I really had intended to kill you both. But you didn’t show right away, and I couldn’t stand there forever with a gun in my hand. So I made it look like suicide.”

  “Why kill Gordon after all these years?”

  “To quote Oscar Wilde, ‘The older women get, the angrier they get.’ I’m very angry, Diana.”

  She aimed her gu
n. I felt the wind and smelled the ocean. There was a loud clatter on the pavers. A big black poodle bounded into the room through the open patio doors. I lunged for Vivian knocking her off balance. We fell to the floor, the gun hard between our bodies. It went off. Her body jerked and again I felt warm blood on my skin. Her angry eyes widened.

  “You okay?” Lang stood there with his legs wide apart, gun in hand, wearing a windbreaker over his cheap suit. Wagging it’s pom-pom tail the poodle loped around from Wynn, to Vivian, to me and back to him.

  “Nice dog,” I said getting to my feet.

  “Belongs to my ex. I couldn’t walk the beach at all hours without some kind of cover. Thought the dog fit right in. You know, Hollywood and all.”

  “You knew this was going to happen?”

  “I knew she killed her husband. But I couldn’t prove it. I just wanted to make sure that she didn’t kill the other person she was obsessed with. You.”

  “You could have gotten here a little sooner.”

  “The damn dog broke loose. I had to chase it. Don’t want the ex upset. Don’t touch anything.” He moved to the phone on the desk.

  I peered down at Vivian. “I never went to bed with Gordon,” I told her for the last time.

  Another Tented Evening

  Over the years I have been to a few Hollywood parties and sometimes I leave wanting to commit murder. As my husband and I drove away from one of these in-your-face affairs, I said in an exhausted voice, “another tented evening.” He looked at me and said, “That’s a title for a short story.” And so it was.

  MAURICE HAMLIN PEERED out from the party tent which covered a grassy section of his vast backyard. His shrewd eyes came to an uneasy rest on the Ferris wheel. It spun around in a blur of colorful lights. Well-dressed men and bejeweled women seem to sit as high as the moon in their swaying chairs. They laughed and waved to one another with that slight embarrassment adults feel when they think they should be enjoying themselves more than they really are.

  Disgusted, Hamlin turned his assessing gaze back to the interior of the tent and surveyed the frolicking clowns, the mimes frozen in mocking imitations of his guests, the balloon sellers, the cotton candy vendors, and the white-jacketed waiters serving Moet & Chandon champagne.

  Hamlin had a familiar look in his eyes; the look of a producer whose movie has gone over budget and out of control. It was an expression I had seen many times in my years of being an actress. But this was not one of Hamlin’s movies, this was his wife’s fortieth birthday party.

  “It’s costing me a fortune. Where the hell is she, Diana?” he demanded.

  “It’s an important birthday. It’s not easy for some women,” I spoke from experience.

  “The party’s been going on for almost an hour. Robin’s the one who wanted all this shit.”

  He tilted his round head toward me. His hair was obviously dyed a reddish-brown color. Hamlin didn’t stay up nights worrying about the loss of subtlety in his search for youth, money, and a box-office hit.

  “Oh, God, I can’t believe I’m married to a forty year old woman.” He eyed a lithe redhead swaying past him. A blue balloon was tied by a long string to the thin silvery strap of her low-cut dress. Printed on the balloon was HAPPY BIRTHDAY ROBIN.

  “Will you go hurry her up, Diana?”

  He didn’t wait for an answer. Producers never do.

  “I hope Robin doesn’t sing tonight,” he mumbled, walking quickly away to catch up with the young woman. I couldn’t remember her name but she had done two movies and was poised to “make it big” or to disappear. It was another tented evening in Hollywood.

  I made my way across the sparkling, black, AstroTurf, grabbed two glasses and a champagne bottle from a waiter’s tray, and stepped out of the tent.

  “Diana!”

  It was Joyce Oliphant. She had just been named head of Horizon Studios. I knew her, many years ago, when she and I were the last of the starlets.

  “Congratulations, Joyce.”

  “I didn’t know you’d be here.” She meant: I thought you were out of the business and no longer important enough to be invited to the Hamlins’.

  Forcing her thin lips into a smile, she purposely did not introduce me to the men standing on each side of her. This was not just a lack of good manners. This was intended to intimidate, to make me feel ill at-ease. Their eyes hunted the party for more important people.

  “What are you doing with yourself?” She tossed her highlighted-brown hair back from her lined, tense face. Her hair was too long for her age. It’s difficult for some women to let go of the decade of their youth—ours was the sixties—no matter how successful they were in the present.

  “I’ve got a small role in Hamlin’s next picture,” I said.

  “I heard you had gone back to work. I do miss Colin.”

  And once again I felt that sharp, isolating pain of loss. Colin was my husband. He had died of a heart attack just fourteen months ago.

  “I miss his wit,” Joyce continued. “Where has all the wit gone?” Her greedy eyes searched the yard as if she could pluck wit from one of the guests’ heads. “Colin had it. There are times, Diana, when a script isn’t working, I want to pick up the phone and say get me Colin Hudson, the greatest writer Hollywood ever had.”

  “I wish you could,” I said.

  One of the men whispered in her ear. New prey had been found and she and I had talked too long. A conversation at a Hollywood party should not last over thirty seconds.

  “We’ll talk. God, I hope Robin doesn’t sing tonight.” Her Chanel shoulder bag, dangling on a gold and leather strap, hit me in the stomach as she spun away.

  I was a middle-aged woman, still good looking enough for a middle-aged woman who was starting over in a business meant for very young women. I had no choice but to work. Colin and I had spent everything he had earned. No regrets. Besides, I had three things in my favor: I could act, I had contacts, and I knew how to play the game.

  The Ferris wheel turned and the music blared as I made my way up the verandah steps to the enormous Neo-Mediterranean house which curved like a lover’s arm around a mosaic-lined pool.

  “Hello, Diana.” Oscar Bryant, my ex-business manager, stood smoking a cigar. Next to him, lurking in the shadow of a banana palm, was Roland Hays the director.

  “How are you, Oscar?”

  “Still hoping you’ll go out with me.”

  Dating your ex-business manager would be like dating you ex-gynecologist. He knows too much about your internal affairs.

  “You know Roland Hays, don’t you?” He turned to Hays. “This is Diana Poole.”

  The director was a slight man with receding black hair. He had a talent for getting the studios to make his movies even though they never turned a profit. For this reason he was referred to as an artist. His evasive dark eyes almost looked at me.

  “Colin Hudson’s widow,” Oscar explained my existence.

  “Great writer,” the director muttered. “God, I hope Robin doesn’t sing tonight.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Have you ever heard her sing?” Oscar asked.

  “No.”

  “Wait. Wait.” He stared at the glasses and champagne bottle in my hands. “What’s all that?”

  “Robin’s having trouble making an entrance.”

  He opened the French door for me. “Maybe you should just leave her up there.” He chuckled.

  “Better for all of us.” The director stepped further back into the sword-like shadows of the palm.

  The house was eerily quiet in contrast to the noise outside. Contemporary art haunted the walls. My high heels clicked out their lonely female sounds as I made my way across a limestone floor to the stairs.

  I’d met Robin Hamlin six months ago in acting class. I had gone back to brush up on the craft I had left when I married Colin. I have to admit—and these things are important to admit—I would not be walking up these stairs, and I would not have made friends with Robin in a
cting class, if she were not Maurice Hamlin’s wife. I say these things are important to admit because at least I’m not lying to myself. Not yet, anyway. As I said, I know how to play the game.

  There was a side to Robin that was spontaneous and delightful. There was the other side that was petulant, insensitive, and demanding. But she had thought of me for the role in her husband’s new movie and got me to read for him and the director. In Hollywood that makes her a person of character. There was also something poignant about Robin. At the age of forty she still dreamed, like a young girl dreams, of being a movie star, a performer, or just famous. Her husband had given her some small roles in his movies. And that’s all they were—small roles doled out by a powerful husband to his wife.

  I made my way down the long hallway to her bedroom suite.

  “Robin? It’s Diana,” I announced to the closed door. “I come bearing champagne. Robin?” I waited. “Robin? Maurice is worried about you.”

  I tapped the door with my toe then pushed it with my foot. It opened. I stepped into a mirrored foyer. My blonde hair, black evening suit, one strand of pearls, red lips, reflected in a jagged kaleidoscopic maze.

  “Robin? It’s Diana.”

  A mirrored door opened. Robin stood there holding a sterling silver candelabra. Two of the four candles were missing. The ones that remained were tilted at a funny angle. Her black hair caressed her bare shoulders. The famous diamond and emerald necklace, which Maurice had given Robin for her last birthday, dazzled around her long slim neck. The necklace and the candelabra were her only attire.

  “Nice outfit,” I said.

  “Thank God, Diana. Come in here quick.”

  I followed her into the bedroom. She locked the door. Setting the bottle and the glasses on her mauve, taffeta-skirted vanity I saw William Delane reflected in the beveled mirror. Fully clothed, he leaned against the white velvet headboard. His misty gray eyes, full of surprise, stared into mine. I whirled around. The right side of his head was caved in. Blood splattered the white coverlet and his green jacket. Little drops of blood dotted the headboard near his thick brown hair. I didn’t have to check his pulse to know he was dead. On the floor next to the bed was a white cocktail dress. Blood streaked the shimmering fabric. “I ruined my dress.” Robin stamped her foot. Her implanted breasts never moved.